


Left Foot First, Right Foot After

by northern



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco
Genre: High School, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northern/pseuds/northern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Mikey a moment to notice, because at first he thought Brendon had finally decided to do something about his disastrous hair style, but then he realized that the wet, reddish look wasn't caused by dye, and that Brendon's glasses had red on them too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Foot First, Right Foot After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annemaris (annemari)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annemari/gifts).



> Written for annemaris in 2010 Bandomstuffsit. Thank you to wonderful betas lalejandra and sperrywink!

Mikey came into the room just as most of the others were leaving.

The students who were on their way out seemed excited about something, judging by the way Owen Meeker fistpumped and said "Fuck yeah!" and several others laughed. Mikey didn't really have time to find out what was so awesome, because he had an actual reason to get into the music room seeing as how class would start soon.

As soon as he got past the last people exiting, he saw Brendon.

Before today, Mikey had always viewed Brendon as the geeky guy who smiled too wide and wore stupid clothes. At the moment Brendon wasn't smiling. He was sitting quietly in a chair with his eyes closed, his mouth in a thin line. It took Mikey a moment to notice, because at first he thought Brendon had finally decided to do something about his disastrous hair style, but then he realized that the wet, reddish look wasn’t caused by dye, and that Brendon’s glasses had red on them too. He breathed in through his nose.

There were always plenty of ketchup packets at the cafeteria, but usually the cafeteria ladies were more careful about protecting them from hoarders.

"Dude," Mikey said quietly, uncertain if Brendon was lost in his inner world of ketchup pain or something. He still had his eyes closed.

Brendon opened his eyes, and Mikey might have thought before that the whole thing was slightly funny, but looking at Brendon's expression took away all of that. Brendon looked devastated. In fact, he looked like he was on the verge of crying.

Mikey shook his head. This was not the time for inaction. The others would be coming in soon, and Brendon couldn’t sit through an entire class like this. Mr Rowlands might ask him what had happened, or give him detention or something.

"We’re going to the bathroom," Mikey decided. Better to skip and hope Mr Rowlands forgot they were supposed to be there. "Come on, Brendon."

Brendon looked at him like he was crazy. "You gonna flush my head in the toilet, too?" he asked. "This isn't enough?"

Mikey stared at him. "I don't hang with those guys," he said.

Brendon stood up, but didn't say anything else. Instead he just looked around the room without meeting Mikey's gaze.

"Come on," Mikey prompted again when it became clear that Brendon wasn't moving.

There were one or two other students showing up for class by now, but Mikey just herded Brendon through the side corridor to the bathroom behind the biology classroom, which wasn’t used as often as the others. Brendon walked with his shoulders hunched and Mikey tried to make sure not too many people saw him, hurrying him along.

The bathrooms on this side of the school didn't smell very good today, but Mikey tried to ignore the stench of wet towels and piss as he pushed the squeaky door open and checked for people inside. There were no other guys in there, so Mikey deemed it safe for now.

Brendon followed Mikey inside. He stood by one of the sinks and turned the taps for water, still without looking at Mikey. Then he scooped some into the palm of his hand and kind of flung it into his hair. Mikey leaned away so he wouldn't get wet.

"I think you'd better just stick your head under there," Mikey said when it was clear all that was happening was that Brendon's clothes were getting wet from ketchupy water running down. It didn't look like blood, exactly, in the weird bathroom lighting, but it was kind of disturbing.

Brendon glanced at him, looking clearly reluctant, but then he took his glasses off, put them on the edge of the sink and bent down.

Mikey reached around him to turn the tap, for more water, and Brendon flinched away when Mikey's arm brushed his shoulder by accident. He didn't stand back up though, so Mikey waited until Brendon’s head was under the tap again and then started getting the mess out of his hair. He'd helped his brother do this, lots of times, when he'd dyed his hair.

"I can, what," Brendon protested when Mikey started finger combing the ketchup out, and his hand came up, half hearted, but Mikey didn't pay him any mind. Brendon's hair was soft and glided easily between his fingers once he got the mess out. It was really nice, actually - much nicer than Mikey's, or Gee’s hair. Maybe there was something to all those people wanting to be hair stylists, if they got to play with hair like this.

Brendon rested his arms on the rim of the sink, supporting his head. He must be tired, standing hunched over like that. Mikey made sure there was nothing left to get out, but it was so nice to just stand there, petting through Brendon's hair. He carded his fingers through it, leaning his hip against the sink, and finally Brendon dropped his head down and listed his whole body toward Mikey until he was leaning against Mikey's side, forehead resting on the rim of the sink. It made Mikey think of Pepper in the evenings, how she'd come in and lean against his legs while he was on the computer until he'd scritch behind her ears and down her neck. He slowed his petting, just letting his fingers drift back and forth over the back of Brendon's neck where the hair was short, watching the way the wet hair there parted and then sprung back again under his thumb.

Brendon eventually pulled away and leaned over the sink again. Mikey did in fact realize that Brendon couldn't stand like that forever and reluctantly turned the taps off.

Brendon stood up, his wet hair producing rivulets of water that ran down his neck and into his shirt.

"Wait," Mikey said, looking around and finding some paper towels in a dispenser that wasn’t empty.

He mopped at Brendon's hair, squeezing the towels around it. He had to get new ones right away, because everything got sopping wet. He looked into Brendon's eyes, to make some funny comment about it, and Brendon was watching him. It made him pause and forget what he was going to say, even when Brendon looked away into the mirror.

He let his hands fall away instead, turning to find the least full trash container.

"Why'd they do it, anyway?" he thought to ask as he chucked the towels into the basket one by one.

Brendon put his hands behind his back, leaning the against the tiled wall. "No reason," he said, looking down.

Mikey could see him if he looked to the side. For some reason, he didn't want to turn back and face Brendon right away. And this way, he could look at Brendon without Brendon staring back like that. He didn't normally have a problem with people looking him in the eyes. It was just. He needed a moment.

Brendon didn't look much different than any guy in this school, Mikey knew that - the invisible kind of guy, anyway, the kind that kept their heads down and did what they were supposed to. Mikey guessed the problem was that Brendon wasn't invisible. He laughed too loud, but didn’t have the easy confidence that guys who did that usually had. He smiled too widely in situations where he shouldn't really be smiling. His glasses were black and chunky, but not in any kind of cool way. The more Mikey thought about it, the more surprised he was at how much he'd thought about Brendon before today.

In any case, he'd never been alone in a room with Brendon before. He busied himself with grabbing more paper towels and wiping his hands and arms to get rid of the last of the wetness. Brendon didn't seem to be moving, but Mikey could see he was glancing toward the door.

"No point going back to Music now," Mikey said and threw the last towel in the trash. He leaned against the wall opposite Brendon, between the mirrors, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Brendon seemed to startle and looked up again. He hunched his shoulders forward and then back again, like he was stretching or something. "I'm, that's my favorite class," he mumbled.

"It won't be if you get detention," Mikey said. "I got it last month, and Mr Rowlands made me write five pages in one hour."

Brendon's face looked empty for a moment or two. Then he smiled, startlingly wide. "I like writing, won't be a problem," he said.

Mikey felt a little uncomfortable, looking at that smile that clearly wasn't real. He should probably keep talking. "Seriously, he came and looked over my shoulder and made suggestions. It was a little creepy."

"I like music," Brendon said, and then fell quiet.

"I like it too, dude," Mikey said, rubbing two fingers over his right eyebrow, knocking his glasses crooked. He pushed them back up, unsure of what else he could say, how to make Brendon smile in a real way.

Then Brendon started talking again. "No one talks to me." His face looked flushed, suddenly. "I try liking all the things they do, I try smiling, I try all the things people say will work, but no one wants to talk to me." Then Brendon's eyes widened, like he'd said something he wasn’t supposed to.

"And now you don't want to talk to me either," Brendon said in a quieter voice, looking away. "Nothing fucking _works_."

Mikey stared at Brendon. He hadn't exactly signed on for being Brendon's personal therapist, but even he could see that Brendon was just being honest, and he could respect that.

"It's okay, man," he said. "It'll get better." Mikey had never really had Brendon's particular problem, but that's what his grandma always told him during that stretch in middle school when Mikey's asthma had made everything suck for a while.

"It _won't_ ," Brendon said, punctuating by hitting the wall behind him in frustration.

"Yes it will," Mikey insisted. "It's like." He paused to organize his thoughts better. "You're building a D&D character, okay? And right at first your character isn't very strong, or doesn't have a lot of magic or whatever. And you can only fight, like... super weak rats and stuff. But then as the game goes on, you do a ton of missions and quests, and you get better at whatever you're building towards, and then you're pawning ogres and dark mages in no time!"

Brendon looked at Mikey in silence for a while without blinking. Then he leaned against the sink next to him. "I tried that game for a bit," he said, "but the books I brought home had guys with horns on the front, and my parents kind of draw the line way before that. They trashed the books and burnt them in the back yard."

Mikey sucked in a breath, shocked. He and Gee had over fifty different books between them with rules, campaigns and ideas for Dungeons & Dragons. If someone had burnt those... "That's..." For some reason, Miss Perlman's voice from last week's history lesson sounded in his mind. "That's fucking censorship," he exclaimed. "Burning books, what the fuck?"

"I know," Brendon said, staring into the tiled floor. "I'd borrowed those books, too. Brent got pretty mad."

"Sophomore Brent?" Mikey asked, because he couldn't imagine senior Brent playing anything but football, and maybe dunking freshmen into toilets for fun. Maybe senior Brent had dunked Brendon. He hung with Owen Meeker quite a lot.

"Yeah," Brendon said. "It was nice of him, you know? And then he didn't want to play with me. Or talk to me."

Brendon stopped talking again, obviously reminded of what he was upset over. Mikey worried the chapped skin of his lips with his teeth, thinking. Brendon liked D&D, even if he hadn't gotten to play much. Mikey and Gee usually had at least one campaign going, meeting one or two nights a week. Well, Gee was the one who actually ran the campaign, but Mikey had always picked the players, since Gee didn’t make friends easily.

Anyway, Brendon liked D&D, and he didn't seem like he was an asshole. Maybe a little emo, but Mikey was used to that. And it might shut him up about the "no one wants to talk to me" thing.

"We're starting a new campaign on Friday," he said. "My brother can help you make up a character real quick if you want."

"What, really?" Brendon said, looking up with his eyebrows drawn together, and yeah, possibly Mikey would be suspicious too if all he'd hear from people at school was "shut up!" or "fag!".

"Yeah," he said, levering himself up from his slouch against the wall. He walked across the room, stopping by and leaning against the sink. "We're only four for this one. Frank doesn't like Ravenloft."

"What," Brendon said, confused, "he's not into horror?"

Mikey made a small grimace, recalling all the arguments before they made the decision to actually play Ravenloft. "Yeah, but Frank only likes, like, zombie horror and splatter. He thinks this is too romantic or something. Gothic. Overwrought." Mikey over-pronounced the last word, still not quite sure what it meant. Gerard seemed to have taken it as a personal insult when Frank accused him of it, though, and had thrown a book at him.

"Huh. I like Gothic horror," Brendon said. He still seemed careful, like he wasn't sure this wasn't all a setup. He had kind of dark eyes, really intense looking without his glasses. Mikey didn't think he'd noticed that before.

"Yeah, you can come over after school," Mikey said, tucking one arm behind his back and grabbing his other elbow. He suddenly felt like jumping, but he didn't, because he wasn't five or anything. "We can get you set up with Gee. He's home most days anyway. He might draw you something."

"Really?" Brendon said, smiling a little. It transformed his face, from worried and scared to bright eyed and friendly, and Mikey sighed in relief on the inside. If Brendon had kept up with the wide stretched grimace he called a smile, it would have been a little uncomfortable to hang out with him.

"Sure!" Mikey reached out and shoved at Brendon's arm.

Brendon looked down at Mikey's hand, his smile fading. He looked puzzled for a moment, but then he raised his own hand and pushed at Mikey's chest, his warm hand lingering there a few seconds, palm flat and fingers spread. It was a little weird, but not unpleasant, not at all. Mikey thought he could probably get used to it.

Brendon turned around and picked up his glasses, turning the tap again. He cleaned them as best as he could under the running water. Mikey watched his concentrated expression through the mirror as he dried the lenses on his damp shirt.

"So you'll meet me in the parking lot after school?" Mikey asked, making sure.

"Okay," Brendon said, smiling into the mirror at Mikey.


End file.
